Introducing JavaFX Scene Builder – public beta unveiled

A new UI building tool has been unveiled for JavaFX, hopefully easing UI layout

Hot off the heels of that great announcement of Stephen Chin and
Jim Weaver would become JavaFX Evangelists for Oracle, the JavaFX
team have revealed an exciting new JavaFX tool at JavaOne
Japan.

Built entirely in JavaFX,
Scene Builder is effectively a tool for laying and creating
JavaFX content, but could initiate something bigger as the first
step towards a more comprehensive rapid application
development (RAD) tool for JavaFX. The first steps of course are
the most important and this FXML editor will certainly ease people
into using JavaFX.

The team has recognised that one of the most difficult
build aspects is constructing the UI from the ground up and say
that JavaFX Scene Builder will hopefully make this layout process
easier, with an added drag and drop functionality and data binding.
Finally, Scene Builder has been given some UI devotion.

The SceneBuilder was built with the intention of being
embeddable in IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse and NetBeans, and it is hoped
that the community help create those plugins. The even
better news for you is that according to JavaFX Chief Architect,
Richard Bair, Scene Builder is now considered stable enough to use
right from the get go. One key caveat though for this to progress
is community feedback.

You can download the Scene Builder on
OTN, and read more about it on the JavaFX Docs page. Once
you’ve familarised yourself with the new tool, why not give the
team valuable feedback via the
announcement page.